


Ascertaining The Relative Safety of One's Environment

by skellerbvvt



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2012-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-07 07:37:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skellerbvvt/pseuds/skellerbvvt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tony wakes up he likes kissing someone. It's not the weirdest thing in the world. It just happens to be the weirdest thing in the world that Bruce is willing to think about right now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ascertaining The Relative Safety of One's Environment

**Author's Note:**

> Written for foxxcub's [Avengers Kissing Meme](http://foxxcub.livejournal.com/764068.html#comments).

Bruce and Tony had fallen asleep in close quarters, to date, four times- wherein close quarters was defined as "touching distance" not just "same room", because some of Tony's rooms were bigger than entire houses, so you couldn't really use that as any kind of scientific measurement. Four times was a significant number, if you considered that Tony had a rather lovely Pepper to fall asleep with, occasionally in other timezones, generally, and they also have separate labs (being from different fields) and they were both sort of entirely unhealthy workaholics, so sleeping was a thing that just sort of happened sometimes. On top of that Bruce doesn't actually, really, properly, _like_ sleeping. Sleeping is a form of losing control. It isn't. It isn't good. 

So four times was plenty of times, really, if you thought about it. 

Bruce had gone to live with Tony, since Tony was the only human being on the planet who trusted Bruce enough to actually continue doing his research with an actual real lab that does things and has expensive things in it, and with actual real funding. He doesn't even have Bruce closely monitored, which isn't... It isn't entirely comforting, exactly, but, equally, were there to be a problem, Bruce is fairly sure Tony would be the only person he could trust to come up with a plan besides "Attack until we run out of bullets," which Bruce feels has been sufficiently proven to be a bad plan.

Or, well, Tony trusts Bruce-as-Bruce-to-stay-Bruce-until-such-a-time-as-The-Other-Guy-is-Needed well enough, he was a little wary about what Bruce was researching at first. Not worried in the way normal people would be. No. But, Bruce supposes, a well documented self-destructive streak and the belief that you can deal with anything would make one more liable to make friends with monsters than otherwise.

"Are you still trying to make Little Cap Juniors? Because I like the guy, mostly, but if we had more than one then I'll have to shoot myself. Or them. Unless you got some super Canadian super solider and he's be Commander Canada, and I could get behind that. There'd be a maple leaf, he'd be even more ridiculously goody-two-shoes. That'd be funny. They could fight over who got to walk an old lady across the street first and when Thanksgiving is."

"I'm not trying to unlock the serum anymore, just trying to get a handle on the Other Guy." Bruce blinked. Bruce was somewhat uncomfortable with the amount of windows every single room of the slowly-being-rebuilt Stark Tower seemed to have. It felt like there was always sunlight shining right into his eyes. Equally, Bruce was starting to suspect there was just something in the water from the 1940's, because Captain America was the only thing that had been made seventy years ago that was completely impossible to recreate. Or maybe the air quality. Or, he thought sometimes, maybe it was just a singular quirk to Steve Rogers that would never be known, because there wasn't a good sample of his blood from before the experiment. Maybe you had to be a sick, weak, tiny, stubborn kid in a country that was desperate for a hero, to become one. 

These were things Bruce thought about instead of sleeping.

The first time they'd fallen asleep in somewhat close proximity (and it wasn't that they fell asleep together, it was just that this particular couch was extremely comfortable and Bruce had been waiting for a 30 hour experiment to run through and then, maybe, he might have been up for longer than that, and this particular newscaster had a weirdly hypnotic way of talking....) he'd woken up (with sunlight streaming right in his eyes) and found Tony sort of...slopped all over him. Like a blanket. Bruce had fallen asleep in close quarters before, and generally people kept themselves to...themselves. He, himself, always found himself in the upper corner of his bed, curled up in all of his blankets and taking up the absolute minimum amount of space. He isn't aware of how Tony sleeps when he's by himself. He doesn't make a habit out of knowing that sort of thing.

Bruce looked around sort of muzzily, blinking the sunlight out of his eyes, and Tony had grumbled something before nuzzling in deeper, and Bruce hadn't. He was never the sort. This was not the kind of. He didn't. This was not a situation to which he'd had any chance to grow accustomed to with any sort of previous related expirence.

And then Tony turned, and the sunlight must have finally gotten through to him, because he snorted awake and blinked heavily down at the carpet. "Wazza. JARVIS."

"Good morning, sir. The time is 9:45 am, you have 47 new messages that I have sorted into descending importance. Mr. Banner your experiment has another three hours until completion, and you have no new messages."

"Thanks for that." He never got new messages except when he sent himself emails of things to print off and Tony asked him why Bruce lived to hurt him. Tony didn't leave messages, he was just suddenly there, or far away and out of contact, mostly. Tony was either entirely there or entirely not, and Bruce was sort of fine with both extremes. He was a man who could deal with extremes.

Tony nodded to the messages, yawned, then leaned up and gave him a quick peck on the lips. It wasn't even really a kiss, as far as Bruce's experiences went. It was just a quick brush of Tony's lips against his, his body heavy over Bruce's, before rolling onto the floor and mumbling a series of constants that ended in JARVIS telling him where he could locate breakfast. Bruce decided showering was the logical next step. He'd missed showering. Some of the showers had windows, though, which was disconcerting. 

And that was the slightly odder part of the falling-asleep-somewhat-near-Tony-Stark (besides the whole everything of it.) Tony would sort of flop his way towards wakefulness (unless startled in which case he was extremely and suddenly and viciously awake) and then kiss Bruce absently before rubbing his face and wandering elsewhere. And he wouldn't mention it again. And Bruce wouldn't mention it again. But Bruce was also pretty sure Tony wasn't confusing him with Pepper because. Well, if nothing else, Pepper always sort of smelled like nice soap and perfume (not that Bruce was sniffing her. It was just. He was aware of these things.) and Bruce smelled like. Not. That. Bruce had stubble. Bruce was about as Not-Pepper as one could reasonable expect to be. So. Tony had kissed Bruce three times (the fourth time being that time he got startled and punched a lamp and Bruce had fallen off the bed. That had also been a time that they had, for perfectly legitimate reasons, both happened to fall asleep in the same bed.)

He tried, mostly, not to over-analyze it. It was just one odd thing mixed in with a whole slew of other, even odder, generally more dangerous, things. Tony, apparently, liked kissing someone first thing in the morning. He also liked flying around in a giant suit of armor and coming up with jokes to make at Captain America's expense. Tony was a mechanical genius, but kept DUM-E around and relatively unchanged because, as far as Bruce could tell, he took a sort of masochistic pride in yelling at the robot. These were things Tony did.

Steve sent them all individual postcards from every state, all with sort of bland, but sincere, well-wishing and tiny little stories. Like how he became a mama duck to a bunch of ducklings because he found their mama as roadkill. Tony of course had shouted "Who investigates roadkill? Who is driving slow enough to _notice_ there is roadkill? The entire world should become a grey blur of unimportance."

The next postcard had been a picture of Steve and his four new duckling friends, who he was taking to an avian rehabilitation facility in Minnesota.

Bruce didn't know enough about everyone else because they all did their own things, and Thor was on another planet, but, in defense, Thor was from another planet and Clint and Natasha were master spies, one of whom still used a bow and arrow in the 21st century. So. That. That was a sufficient amount of oddness, really. 

Bruce had to go to a gas station in order to get coffee horrible enough to drink (you could get addicted to a certain kind of awful), and sometimes he forgot there was a washing machine and so he wore the same outfit several weeks in a row, and sometimes he took several hour long showers and stared at the tile (because some of the showers _didn't_ have windows, _or_ magical not-fogging mirrors, and those were the only showers worth using) and no one would bother him, because there was no one to bother him, and he'd just stand there because _what if he never got to shower again_ , and sometimes he hoarded food and cash in his room in case. Because. Just. In the event that an unpleasant occurrence necessitated his emergency, individual, evasive action.

So getting kissed good-morning three times wasn't particularly odd at all. It just so happened to be the only one of those million odd things that Bruce felt comfortable dwelling on. He couldn't entirely conceptualize his life if he thought about it as a whole, but if he took tiny little fragments of oddness, he could work them between his hands like a raccoon and maybe find some equilibrium. This particular oddity just seemed the least likely to cause some sort of explosion. Or Steve writing a very polite, hand-written letter about how heart-rending it was to leave his ducks, even though he knew it was the right thing to do, and then getting another letter from the avian rehabilitation facility saying someone had donated five hundred dollars in their name. 

"Who writes in _cursive_ anymore?" Tony had asked, staring at the paper. "I want to scan this and make it a font called Times Old Captain. Or something. I'll think of a better name." 

Bruce had later found that font to download, under "Captain America Grandma Font" on the Internet in an unrelated search. It was extremely popular, judging from the statistics. Bruce had downloaded it.

Tony had fallen asleep on a plane between Bruce and Pepper, because Pepper had stolen his cell phone and apparently Tony went through stages of boredom that generally ended in him falling asleep for a lack of anything better to do.

"I really don't think I should go on the plane." Bruce had warned.

"You were fine on the Hellicarrier." Tony had waved him off, "It'll be fine."

"The Hellicarrier was nearly destroyed, and this was only avoided because a they sent a plane to fire at him, and he still ripped the plane apart and fell long enough to knock me out." Bruce corrected him. 

"It'll be fine. It's a private jet. No TSA, no crying babies, massage chairs instead of uncomfortable seats. I don't know how uncomfortable they are. I don't think I've ever flown in an actual commercial plane. Oh, there's a thought. I could make planes that run on clean energy and make them affordable and not the worst thing to fly on ever. JARVIS take a note, we're going to redesign the commercial airliner."

"Of course, sir." JARVIS said in a way that Bruce was learning meant that this was never going to be followed up on. Which was sort of a shame, but, then, there only needed to be so many things flying in the sky that belonged to Tony.

Bruce had sat on the outside, Pepper next to the window and Tony had paced, poked around at the in-flight televisions, the minibar, Pepper and finally Bruce before slumping down in his seat like an exhausted toddler and falling asleep all huddled in on himself, sunglasses dropping down his face.

Bruce had stared at him, and then back down at his book, and then over at Pepper- who had removed her shoes and was primly curled up in her seat- doing something related to running a big company, no doubt. Paperwork or emails or firing people. Bruce wasn't sure what be an administrator required. If she was nervous about being in a small, pressurize space with him with no route to escape, she was doing a marvelous job of hiding it. Though maybe you were less scared of things when your boyfriend was Iron Man. Or maybe you just got used t being scared of things and never showing it. Bruce wondered why they ended up sitting in a row. He was pretty sure a plane should have more than three seats, even with cargo.

"He took them out." Pepper commented after he craned around enough. "Or had them taken out, anyways."

Bruce nodded. She looked up from her...things...expectantly. He fiddled with his hands a bit, book splayed across his lap and mostly forgotten.

"You're not going to ask why?"

"I uh." Bruce looked at his shoes. "Because he's Tony?" He tried, because that always seemed a good plan. 

Tony had met Bruce and about five minutes later decided to invite him over to stay with him and have his own lab. Bruce, in response,had begun work on finding a tranquilizer that would take The Other guy down, in case of. Incidence. ("I'm nearly positive you can't do more damage to my property than I have previously already probably done to it at some point. Besides, me and the big guy get on. It'll be awesome, come on, I have a thing. Let's go do a thing, it'll be awesome.")

"Hm." Pepper went back to her work. 

Bruce tried to go back to his book, and ended up doodling in the margins, allowing Tony to eat up more and more of his space as he stretched out over both of them. Pepper had shoved him off when he'd impeded her ability to breath and so now Bruce had Tony's head on his shoulder and Tony's full weight shoved up against his arm. 

When they landed she put Tony's cell phone back in his hands and his hands began fiddling with it before his eyes were even open. He turned his head to Pepper and got a kiss in return, which Bruce turned away from and then looked down at his book, which he couldn't even remember what it was about. He was two hundred pages in, though. He might have just been turning pages for a bit, there.

Tony leaned over and kissed him, moving his head so he could get to his mouth, and then promptly shoved himself up, stretched and was already poking around an idea on his phone. Bruce stared at Pepper because. You. That. You don't kiss other girl's boyfriends? 

"He does that." Pepper replied, finishing putting on her shoes. "Do you want me to talk to him? He's kissed Rhodey a dozen times at least. I can talk to him if it makes you uncomfortable. He doesn't really mean anything by it other than...well." She frowns. "I don't know exactly what goes through his head."

Bruce had a few theories, but then, psychology wasn't his field either. But, if nothing else, it was a good way to ascertain whether your environment was safe or not, if the people who were near you when you'd been defenseless were worth trusting. Or, maybe, it was to thank them for not doing anything too bad to him while he was more man than iron. Or maybe Tony just liked kissing. Bruce didn't mind, really. They were the only form of physical interaction he'd gotten of late that wasn't...unfortunate.

"It's. I mean. If you don't." He cleared his throat and somehow there was sun still right in his eyes. He had no idea what he'd done to the sun that made it have a grudge match against him, but apparently blinking a lot was answer enough for Pepper because she clapped him on the arm. 

"Come on, let's see if LA agrees with you."


End file.
